This month's Business 2.0 magazine reports that the father of both Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel has created an environment that will send computer programmers the way of the dinosaur and the cassette tape. Charles Simonyi claims to have created a software-generating environment that will allow the average domain expert to plug and play components to build even the most complicated application—with little or no help from a human programmer.
However, it's not all bad news. The part-time astronaut says programmers will still be required a few more years—until artificial intelligence matures enough for computers to write their own components.
The fact is: this isn't the first time we've heard this. The same claim was made when Borland introduced Delphi back in 1995. Delphi also used components and connected the dots through object-oriented programming, and in short order, much of the drudgery of coding was removed—but really all this did was free developers to skip the routine and work on the hard stuff.
In our world, anytime to build a customer one thing, they will be inspired to ask for another. If OOP is again taken to greater heights, there will always be greater demand for the next customers' impossible dreams.
In fact, Borland Delphi could have ultimately reached the heights predicted by Simonyi, but—likely due to poor managing and marketing decisions—the product never reached it's full potential.
So, sure, programming is dead—but that's okay. We've been dead before.
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